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O2 offers Asus-made XDA as the IQ

'Jupiter' mission lands in UK

O2's UK operation has already begun offering its business customers one of the new XDA smart phones that appeared on the US Federal Communications Commission website last week. There branded the XDA Graphite, here it's being sold as the XDA IQ.

The carrier's website adds some extra details to the specifications that appeared on the FCC site: the IQ has Wi-Fi support and is a quad-band phone. The information supplied to the FCC by the handset's manufacturer, Asus, pointed to a tri-band device without 802.11. The IQ has a 1.3 megapixel camera and a 2.2in, 65,536-colour display.

O2 quotes a talk time of 300 minutes and a stand-by period of 250 hours.

The IQ is one of O2's first XDAs to be produced by a company other than well-known smart phone maker HTC. HTC designed and manufactured all the XDAs launched before the IQ, but recently it parted ways with O2, possibly a result of its desire to build a brand of its own.

The cellco is offering business buyers the IQ at a range of tariff-dependent prices. Buy a big enough airtime package and they could get the handset for nothing - extra IQs are priced at £50 inc VAT and up. ®